Reflection

Reflecting on the Work

What worked well

Refrained from coming up with ideas prior to user research, allowing us to come in with a clean slate during the ideation and design.
Returning participants across milestones built productive continuity. By the usability testing phase, participants were giving us highly specific, forward-looking feedback rather than general impressions.
Grounding the companion app in ForeFlight's existing visual language was validated by testing, both usability participants cited it as the reason the prototype felt immediately learnable.
Maintained strong team alignment and communication throughout the project, enabling efficient transitions between research, design, and iteration without losing focus.

What we'd do differently

If we had more time, expand participant pool beyond n=2 for concept and usability testing. Our findings are directionally strong but not broadly generalizable. A larger sample across more experience levels would increase confidence.
Test in-person with one of our phones, instead of testing the prototype made for a phone on a computer; Making some swiping features unintuitive
Conduct an additional round of usability testing after design revisions. Due to project time constraints, several design changes were informed by participant feedback but could not be re-tested. With more time, we would have conducted another testing cycle to validate whether the revisions improved usability and resolved the issues identified during testing.

Limits to our solution

Business and military pilots

Our research focused exclusively on GA pilots. Business and military contexts have different social structures, institutional support systems, and safety constraints that may require an entirely different design approach.

International Pilots

ForeFlight serves pilots outside the U.S. where regulatory structures, credential systems, and aviation community norms differ significantly. The trust model we designed is built around FAA certification — it needs rethinking for other regions.

References

Haffey, B. M., & Gardner-Vandy, K. (2025). The Impact of Socialization on Student Intention to Persist and Flight Training Outcomes. Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research, 34(4), Article 1.

Supported the motivation that social connection improves pilot persistence and motivation.

Kim, J., Klein-Balajee, T., Kelly, R. M., & Hiniker, A. (2025). Discord's Design Encourages "Third Place" Social Media Experiences. arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.09951.

Informed our use of optional, interest-based community structures over open social feeds.

Sharma, N., Butler, B. S., Irwin, J., & Spallek, H. (2011). Emphasizing Social Features in Information Portals: Effects on New Member Engagement. JASIST, 62(11), 2106–2120.

Directly supported our decision to build a separate companion app rather than embedding features in ForeFlight.

Simon, F., et al. (2021). BLEXVFR: Designing a Mobile Assistant for Pilots. MobileHCI '21 Adjunct, 6:1–6:5. ACM.

Established the core design constraint: aviation tools must minimize cognitive load during high-demand moments.

Appendix

Research & Ideation Materials:

Final Documentation:

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